Current trail conditions are packed snow and ice. Probably more to come in the next couple of days. We didn't bring our Yaktrax and paid the price by slipping and sliding all over the place. Our ascent took too long, and the more careful descent even longer.
Still we made it up and had the radio on the air only 15 minutes later than the alert we posted. I am still using a linked dipole and the snow-covered rocks really cramped my style. Not enough room to extend it for 40M this time. Even on this Thursday morning, there were too many people around to put the antenna on the lookout.
There was some cold and wet scurrying involved. Because of the slippy conditions, I tried extending one of the antenna's wires by attaching it to a water bottle and giving it a toss. I didn't want to climb out to the more dangerously exposed area - of course something came apart and I had to climb out there anyway!
So I go on the air... and then it got messy - or at least the quality of my operating got messy when the CW keyer started adding dashes, taking away dashes, and sending whole strings of dashes intermittently. I messed with the radio, the paddles and the cable but nothing seemed to work. Finally, I ended up using the paddle as a tiny awkward straight key to log a few more folks before shutting down.
Had a great trip despite the difficulty and glitches... it was one beautiful day!
